About

This project, carried out by Statewatch and migration-control.info and funded by Brot für die Welt, Misereor, medico international and Pro Asyl, aims to make the EU’s externalisation policies, plans and practices public. In doing so it seeks to highlight their impact on the rights of people on the move, as well as democratic standards, transparency and accountability. It addresses a lack of public information by publishing relevant EU documents, in this phase primarily those produced or discussed by the Council of the EU. It also tackles the overflow of information that results from a variety of EU institutions, working groups and national governments involved in the externalisation agenda by summarising thematic and regional developments, and by analysing key issues in depth

Content

Editorial: old wine, old bottles – new glasses? 2

Thematic and regional developments 4

Border management 4

Budgets and funding 5

Deportation and readmission 5

Migration partnerships 6

Other 7

Analysis: Violence at a distance: Frontex’s increasing role outside the EU 8

Find the whole bulletin here

Editorial: Old wine, old bottles - new glasses?

Earlier this month, EUobserverreported that the European Commission has adopted “a new rhetoric”.

It targets “irregular migrants” and “failed asylum seekers,” and pushes “a political priority to increase return rates of people ordered to leave the EU.”

This is, in fact, historic rhetoric. We are being served old wine from old bottles. Perhaps the only thing new is the glasses in which it is being served.

In any case, the renewed prominence of this discourse is leading to new policy initiatives.

These initiatives require the EU to assert greater power over non-EU states, to encourage cooperation in the migration control agenda – an agenda that will lead to the continued abuse and dehumanisation of migrants and refugees.

“Leverage” over non-EU states

For years, the EU has been looking for ways to increase “leverage” against non-EU states, to try to get them to accept deportations.

This has included visa sanctions, and proposals to introduce trade sanctions against states that refuse to accept deportation flights.

Sound familiar?

Almost immediately after the return to power of Donald Trump, the US administration proposed massive sanctions against imports from Colombia, to try to force the country to accept deportation flights from the US.

It worked.

Blanket secrecy

Many of Trump’s admirers in European governments are likely wishing they had the power to do the same, and with such ease. In the EU there is at least some semblance of democratic procedure around these issues.

Up to a point, anyway.

MOCADEM is the entity in which EU governments work to coordinate border externalisation policies. As Statewatch reported in January, the Polish Council presidency has proposed various ways to improve its working methods.

Parliamentary scrutiny was not amongst the potential improvements. There is currently no such scrutiny.

We hope that the MOCADEM documentspublished with this bulletin.

Outsourcing borders: Monitoring EU externalisation policy

Bulletin 5, 11 February 2024

3

Border control: inside-out, outside-in

Elsewhere in Brussels, member state officials have been discussing their hopes and dreams for the EU’s forthcoming new law on deportations.

A discussion paper from the Polish presidency raised a crucial point: increasing deportations requires the cooperation of non-EU states.

That is to say: “internal” policies have profound “external” dependencies and effects.

Other documents published with this bulletin highlight the same issue.

For example, the Polish presidency has suggested deploying migration liaison officers as far afield as Türkiye and the UAE, in the name of countering the “instrumentalisation” of migration.

The aim would be to prevent certain people travelling to Russia and Belarus.

Meanwhile, plans for deportation camps in non-EU states (referred to in the EU’s sanitised jargon as “return hubs”), are ongoing.

Perhaps it is stating the obvious, but the externalisation of border and immigration controls is inseparable from the policy initiatives launched within the EU, or at its external borders.

Frontex outside the EU

Politicians and officials know this, of course. That is why Frontex has been slowly increasing its operations, contacts and initiatives in states from Morocco to Moldova.

The agency’s annual report on cooperation with so-called “third countries” is examinedin this bulletin.

It shows an ongoing encroachment on and involvement with the activities of non-EU states. That process will have increased further in the period after that covered by the report (2023).

We are also happy to provide, for the first time, updates on jurisprudence relevant to the externalisation of border controls. These are provided by members of the Refugee Law Initiative Working Group on Externalisation.

Trump’s return to power has given a boost to his admirers and allies all around the world. Europe is no exception. They will seek to advance the initiatives examined in this bulletin, alongside many others. The question remains: how to stop them?